045 / Dr Rob / Tokyo-to Kissa #3

The pink balloons atop the four foot tall Altec 7 cinema speakers are deflated, spent and shriveled like ball bags in an outside privy on a winter’s morning. The lists of cocktails that decorate the walls have long since been mixed. The night lit by fluorescent shots long since sunk. No more limes to slice. No more lemons to be squeezed. No more gaigen swearing at the overworked bar staff. The Lowrider posse. The samurai. The photographers. The dancing girls. Girls in tracksuits, see-through sheer dresses, and corn-rows. The Rosies. Have all gone.

The couch beside the decks left vacant now the Metro is up and running. The gorgeous jazz-singer out of sight and out of mind. My eyes, long accustomed to the dark and the smoke, watch the dB-display attached to the vintage UREI. A flickering pulse amid the empty glasses and overflowing ashtrays. 6 AM in a basement bar in Ebsiu, that’s fun but uncomfortable with more than thirty people. There’s only five of us left.

An irresistible force feeds Coldcut through infinite loops. Reflecting sadness off a thousand mirrors. I hammered this when it came out. I was living above an off-license at the wrong end of Upper Street. Naked to the top deck of the No. 19. If it’s tonic water youze want, it’s tonic water you’ll get. Bandulu do Acid Jazz. One for the Land Of Oz regulars who swapped writing graffiti amid the violence and whores of Streatham Hill for Thailand and a dragon’s warm embrace. Electric counterpoint and a key change bring new horizons. A rare feeling of great optimism. (Little Fluffy) Clouds in a blue sky. Ships at a distance have all men’s dreams on board.

Voodoo echoes through an empty city at dawn. Rattling down the black line. Post-coital techno. Sexed with strangers on a lonely come-down grey journey home from North to South. My love she lives on the Tulse Hill Estate. Dresser strewn with make-up. Cold wooden floor strewn with fashion magazines and clothes. Silverfish in the loo. Woozy with cider. Sick for another drink.

Nineteen years later sunshine betrays the cold on a lonely afternoon in Kohinata. I haven’t spoken to a soul all day. Waiting for the kids to come home. Thoughts move to the frozen snows of Karuizawa. A retreat from the world half-way up an active volcano. Home seems too long ago. Tokyo is too hard. I need a place to hide awhile. I am not Tereza, like Sabrina I’ll disappear.

Some strange cargo, back in another basement. This one on Seven Dials. Running with Fat Cat and GPR. Out-drinking Bjork and freaking out Scanner. Wandering the Mermaid Theatre in a haunted cowboy-shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons. Big apples and star dancers. The ghost of A Gravitational Arc Of Ten sings the blues. Rez over everything. White silence on Almeida Street, bar the ringing in my ears.

Heavy skies give (fallen) angles sway. Airto swings into the theme to Roald Dahl’s Tales Of The Unexpected. Bar-owner Batch gives his last thumbs-up. Marbo, who was feigning sleep, gives me a round of applause, but I can’t tell if it’s in jest. A standing ovation before stumbling up the stairs and out towards the cold morning and the station. Skipping breakfast from the restaurant opposite that specializes in horse meat sashimi. The streets of Ebisu empty save clean-up squads washing the roads and picking up drunks. Guys in tight black Beatles suits. Girls in floral mini-dresses and cowboy boots.

About

Test Pressing was founded in October 2008 by Paul Byrne a.k.a Apiento. The site originally posted tracks and mixes across the genres that loosely fitted into the “Balearic” genre, but has slowly developed with reviews, articles, video and interviews and music across the board. Mid-way along the journey Paul Byrne was joined by Robert Harris, a.k.a Japan-resident Dr Rob, and together they now run Test Pressing. The goal of the site is to inform people about things we love. If you have any problem with any music we feature or use please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here. If you’d like to contribute to the site then feel free to get in touch here as we love to talk. Take care, Apiento & Dr Rob. x.

Credits.

Design by Village Green
Code by James
Icons by Josh Deane & Thomas Le Bas

Advertising

We now feature advertising on Test Pressing, our goal being to work with brands in a way whereby advertising is sympathetic, fitting and of interest to our audience. If you are working with or for a brand and would like to discuss working together with Test Pressing from an editorial or advertising perspective then please get in touch here.

Work with us

As well as the Test Pressing website we also work in music supervision (see the 2013/2014 ICA exhibition ‘Moments In Love’ where we created four hours of soundbed) and create bespoke podcasts, through to providing DJs from our network of friends and DJs for club and bar-based events. If you have something that we may be able to help you with then get get in touch here.

Submit Music

We like to review and write about new music that fits our (hard to pin down) world, so if you have anything that you’d like to send in via email then please mail to both Dr Rob and Apiento for consideration. We can’t promise anything but if we like it we’ll get it in somehow – be it podcast, review or snapping it for our Instagram.

Submit Events

We rarely write about events but if you’ve got something special on the go then get in touch with us (yep) here.